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#1 This is really nice and something I was going to need on my project. So drink more coffee, get less sleep, and code more. ;)

#2

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I just refined it art wise and tweeked it to work in T3D 1.2.

That's some damn fine refining! :)

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I have Drill this weekend for the National Guard so I will be away on Saturday and Sunday

That doesn't sound like much of a retirement. :P

#3 Ron, works a treat mate. Gotta love drag 'n' drop implementation! Caustics and underwater distortion are great. Thanks for putting this out for the community!

#4
It looks very nice good job on this!

#5 Thanks!

#6 Way cool. Can't wait until this is in the repo!

#7 Thanks much for this! Really was wish that, since i play with Torque.
Great work Ron! I will test this as soon i can, and I'm sure the Neptun pack demo will look pretty with this.

#8 @Ron: Thank you for this awesome contribution.

On a side note ... when your African Savanah pack is released ... you have a true South African buyer here. :)

#9 Nice work Ron

#10 Thanks for porting this to T3D 1.2. One less thing to worry about.
Thank you again Ron!

#11 Color me Impressed. Truly like the effect. I think the "shiny" on the water bottom is a tad too light or the water is a tad too dark.

Either the "shiny" needs a hint of the water color to tone down the bright white, or the Water will need to be much clearer to match the "shiny".

Another way to explain: Blue Plastic lighted with White neon at a 2" depth from the Plastic is what gives us Blue Channel Letters for a Store front. You don't see the White neon outline... only the shiny blue letter(s).
Or on a clear ocean around an isolated Island, the white shiny on the ocean floor at full daylight will give us the Shiny effect like the video.

But I really do like what happens when you don't sleep... We all get Gifts and everyone likes freebie gifts. LOL.

Thank you Ron.

#12 All,

Thanks for the comments. There has been a couple of bugs reported:

1. Spawning a player underwater causes the turbulence effect to not initialize. (Pretty sure I know what this is and I am fixing it)

2. Under certain conditions the turbulence effect will be multiplied and the distortion gets really bizarre. (This is an odd one, I can not always get it to repeat)

@ Scott, Agreed, I am still playing around with the proper setting and maps. Additionally, I want to incorporate a depth cue, basically, this is the point of depth in the water where the light is so diffused that caustics are not visible.

These are the reasons I released it as beta, more to follow once I get fixes in place.

Again, thanks for the comments and I am working to correct the issues.

Ron

#13 Thanks Ron !

#14 Very nice. Can't wait till this is a standard feature in Torque.

#15 Hi Ron,

A few days ago, I was playing Serious Sam, yes an old fps game (2001), and I saw nice underwater caustic effects, and I thought to myself; it's a pity Torque 3d do not have such those effects.

Great your work with sub aquatic caustic effects and moreover, very easy installation.

Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Cheers,

#16 Awsome Job Ron Keep it up

#17 THANK YOU. Very cool caustics. I really like your work Ron. I had issues with the "shiny" as well. I created new images with much larger "caustic swirls" and lightened the overall color -which effectively reduced the amplitude of the "shiny." It fits perfectly! Thanks again for all your hard work!

#18 Only issue I've ran into with these caustics is when you have an object submerged and the caustics reflect on it. Like when the terrain is side projecting the texture, the caustics get stretched, but this is more to do with the way that specific model was setup for texturing than anything else. Good job Ron! :)

[EDIT]
Ok, so I found a tiny 'problem' with the turbulence shader. If you call it a problem, but I did. The way the accumTime was used in this shader tended to result in what I would call over distortion. It gradually overtime, gets more and more distorted instead of keeping to a smooth distortion pattern one would want. So, I ended up recoding it to get a more "watery" or turbulent feeling as well as fixing the time issue. It's not required of anyone to use it but feel free if you like it.


here is the code for the pixel shader portion:

float4 main(PFXVertToPix IN, uniform sampler2D inputTex : register(S0)) : COLOR 
{	
	float reduction = 128;	
	float power = 1.0;
	float speed = 3.0;
	float frequency=8;	

	float backbuffer_edge_coef=0.98;
	float2 screen_center = float2(0.5, 0.5);	
	float2 cPos = (IN.uv0 - screen_center);
	
	float len = 1.0 - length(cPos);		
	float2 uv = clamp((cPos / len * cos(len * frequency - (accumTime * speed)) * (power / reduction)), 0, 1);
	return tex2D(inputTex, IN.uv0 * backbuffer_edge_coef + uv);
}

Using this code, it doesn't matter what time is passed in, as it's just used for animation and wont accumulate to a super distorted effect over the next 5 or more minutes (generally took about 10 min to get some crazy looking stuff with the last one). I don't know how many people stay in the water that long, but I figured it would be an improvement. ;)

If anyone wants to hook this up to their postFx menu, just set this function inside of the tubulence.cs file

$TurbulenceFx::reduction = 128;
$TurbulenceFx::power = 1.0;
$TurbulenceFx::speed = 3.0;
$TurbulenceFx::frequency = 8;

function TurbulenceFx::setShaderConsts(%this)    
{    
	%this.setShaderConst("$refTime", $Sim::time); 
	%this.setShaderConst("$reduction", $TurbulenceFx::reduction);
	%this.setShaderConst("$power", $TurbulenceFx::power);
	%this.setShaderConst("$speed", $TurbulenceFx::speed);
	%this.setShaderConst("$frequency", $TurbulenceFx::frequency);
}

And comment out those settings in the pixel shader. This will at least allow you to create the gui for it and control it in script. Easy as pie.

#19 Very nice...

#20 Smally,

Most excellent. I was looking at this today actually, since I noticed it was an issue. There will be a new zip put together once I add in your fixes. Great work.

Ron